As of now, the 2024 winter season for the ANHS girls soccer team has proved to be an ascending battle as the players struggle for victory while maintaining the second place standing in the South Coast League.
With changes in the team’s leadership being made, the players are having to be quick to adapt to these changes. This year, the team has a new head coach: Coach Marco Spaccini.
Captain Alaina Villa states Spacinni is “super positive, has a passion for soccer and his team and is very focused on creating a new culture for the team.”
Also helping to lead the girls varsity soccer team is Paige Balducci (10) who plays as the team captain while impressively only being an underclassman.
With this new initiative on the team, varsity currently has earned four wins, five losses and two ties during the season so far.
These hard working athletes scored their wins against Beckman, Portola, El Toro and San Clemente High Schools. The scores for each of these winning games, in the same order, are 4 to 0, 4 to 1, 3 to 0 and 1 to 0.
However, with good sportsmanship, they’ve lost to Edison, Jserra Catholic, El Dorado, El Toro and Capistrano Valley High School. The scores for the games against these schools are as follows: 2 to 0, 3 to 1, 2 to 1, 1 to 0 and again 1 to 0.
But turning things around for them, the girls tied games against the Marina Vikings with a score of 1 to 1 and again against the Cathedral Catholic Dons with the final score of 2 to 2.
Villa is one of the team’s most notable players as she plays as the attacking mid for her team and has verbally committed to play D1 soccer at Iowa State University after high school.
That being said, she went on to say that her goals for this current season is to “finish top 3 in league” and to “improve [her] finishing/scoring.”
Another notable member of the girls soccer team is Cameron Simmons (12). Simmons plays the position of Aliso’s goalkeeper.
When asked about her goals, Simmons stated that, “This season, I just want to continue improving as a player and to hopefully help the team to win the league and go to CIF.”
In order to reach these dreams, the players are showing great amounts of dedication and grit as they are training hard.
According to Simmons, “Practices are really good and it’s clear to me that the work we are putting into practice is showing in our game play. The team is really coming together.”
With hard work during their practices and high spirits during their games, Aliso Niguel’s girls soccer team continues on this stormy journey to score their goals, both physical and aspirational ones.
